But however romantic in effect, the nineteenth-century novel was realistic in intent, and we may in a measure take the will for the deed. Of this devotion to reality we have several testimonies, from such important witnesses as Trollope, Dickens, Thackeray; but two are of especial interest as they come from two of the most undeniable romanticists, Lytton and Brontë.
In her Preface to the belated edition of The Professor, Charlotte Brontë declared her own preference for a depiction of a normal and unadorned existence to be thwarted by the lack of editorial enthusiasm. After stating the condition of things she adds—
"* * * the publishers in general scarcely approved of
this system, but would have liked something more imaginative
and poetical—something more consonant with a highly wrought
fancy, with a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender,
elevated, unworldly. Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose
of a manuscript of this kind he can never know what
stores of romance and sensibility lie hidden in breasts he would
not have suspected of casketing such treasures."
An accurate description of Victorianism is contained
in this ironic indictment, and perhaps also an explanation
of the romantic trend of its realism on the ground of the
law of supply and demand as well as that of natural propensity.
Lytton prided himself prodigiously on his true rendering of life, though of his two dozen novels, The Caxtons alone approaches the realistic type, and pictures in one of his heroes[1] a phase at least of his artistic ideal:
"The humblest alley in a crowded town had something
poetical for him; he was ever ready to mix in a crowd, if it were
- ↑ Ernest Maltravers, 32. Cf. How It Strikes a Contemporary.
